As New Mexicans prepare to celebrate the 100th anniversary of statehood, many at New Mexico State University also are taking steps to mark the occasion.

Jon Hunner, NMSU professor of history and department head, will teach “Time Travel to 1912,” a spring semester course that gives students a living history experience. The students will research and roleplay living in 1912 in the Mesilla Valley. Local fifth-12th grade students will join the class in reliving the year of statehood during the final third of the semester.

Two books in the Centennial Book Series by faculty members already have been published, with more planned. A third book on New Mexico’s water wars is planned.

NMSU’s Public History Program is completing the New Mexico History Minute, a list of important and interesting events in New Mexico History for all 365 days of the year.

The Centenary of New Mexico Statehood exhibit in the museum at Kent Hall will illustrate the changes in New Mexico from territory to state, and the “Digital Centennial History of New Mexico” at the NMSU Rio Grande Historical Collection can be accessed at http://digitalnm.unm.edu.

The NMSU Statehood Centennial Committee, formed by Provost Wendy Wilkins, is coordinating plans for numerous other activities. One is a special breakfast on Centennial Day – Jan. 6, 2012 – that will serve as a fundraiser for the NMSU Alumni Office. Professor Hunner, who chairs the committee, will present his “Stumble to Statehood” lecture at the breakfast. Another idea presented to the committee is to publish a cookbook with recipes from 1912.

The committee also is assessing NMSU’s role in the 150th anniversary next year of the Morrill Act, signed in 1862, which provided for the establishment of land-grant universities, like NMSU. One possibility will be participation in the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which will have the Morrill Act as its theme in the summer of 2012.